For foodies like us, one of the best things about visiting Las Vegas is the restaurant scene. And because of the constant and massive flow of tourists from around the world, the choices pretty much cover the whole gamut of ethnic cuisines at various price ranges and levels of quality and presentation.
The Las Vegas strip in particular is known for some seriously high-end restaurants with their accompanying seriously high-end pricing. And unfortunately, expensive meals do not always equate to exceptional meals. Don’t get me wrong, there are numerous restaurants in the various resorts along Las Vegas Boulevard that earn every penny for their elaborate dishes and high quality ingredients along with incredible customer service. But its good to know you don’t necessarily need to take out a second mortgage to finance a week’s worth of dining in Vegas to insure memorable restaurant experiences.
On our recent visit to Las Vegas, we decided to seek out some restaurants with a reputation for exceptional food and customer service while adhering to a reasonable budget (with the exception of our New Year’s Eve meal – gory details to come). Many of these restaurants are located off the strip, perhaps leading to less inflated pricing. Not quite cheap eats, but prices that pretty much anyone can handle, by Vegas standards anyway.
Our first stop combines the best of both worlds – great food and moderate pricing located right on the strip! You just knew we had to fit in some great Japanese food while travelling, and RA Sushi Bar Restaurant is ideally located outside the Fashion Show Mall across from the spectacular Wynn Resort.
Love the sexy black and red branding at RA. The restaurant decor is classy and modern, but has a fun clubby/casual vibe going on. We were trying to stay closer to London Ontario time to get the most out of some early morning hiking, so we were grabbing a very early lunch. For this reason, the restaurant has only a handful of patrons, but near the end of our meal closer to noontime, the place was rocking.
RA Sushi Bar has a great selection of sushi as well as a good number of fusion dishes and convenient bento boxes for lunch. As always, our standard by which all Japanese restaurants are judged is the quality and freshness of the fish. And RA gets high marks in both regards. The salmon in particular was very flavourful with a melt-in-your-mouth texture. Great place to grab lunch and I would imagine with the crowded strip, it gets quite lively in the evenings. Recommended. For now, back to the cage.